The night of the accident, back in August, I pretended everything was okay.
“Dudes,” Chad had said to some friends of his who pulled up next to us in front of the Cumbie Farms, “I bet you a thousand dollars my little brother and I can jack a car faster than you.”
It had been a long time since Chad and me had broken into a car and I doubted he and his friends had any money, unless they were dealing, which they probably were, but I didn’t want to know. I hadn’t seen much of Chad in three years, not since he had turned eighteen and joined the Army.
“Why you wanna go fight the war?” I asked him before he left.
Chad pointed to his head and said, “Gotta be easier than fighting the war inside.”
It wasn’t that Chad was a bad guy, it was that he was good at things you weren’t supposed to do, like breaking into places and stealing shit. And Chad had this ability to not get caught, which, in a twisted way, made me and Caroline think he was going to do well being off in the Army fighting terrorists. But not even Mom could explain why Chad was eventually discharged and came back from Afghanistan with scripts for all kinds of things, except to say, “It’s as if your brother has taken lots of bullets inside his heart, Tommy. You can’t actually see the place that got hurt, but if you could, you’d know how badly he’s suffering.” Sometimes I could see it written all over his face, though, like that night sitting and drinking in the car at Cumbie’s.
“Remember how good it used to be?” Chad asked. “You and me, droppin’ it like it’s hot?” He took a swig from his beer and wiped his mouth.
I remembered how it was, letting Chad talk me into sneaking into someone else’s garage, their car, their house, riding away on their bikes with PlayStations and laptops stuffed into our backpacks. It was everything I had wanted to forget about myself, but for Chad. Once he left, I started trying to clean up my act, but now Chad was back and he had a thousand dollars riding on my back.
“Yeah, that was cool,” I said as we finished off our beers before heading out to find a new ride for the night. Maybe it’s cause we grew up without a dad, but it was easier to lie than to admit that I never wanted to do any of that stuff, I had just wanted to be with Chad. “Welcome home, bro,” I said. “It’s good to have you back.”
Chad passed me another bottle of beer. As he steered the car onto the dark road, I felt myself move back to that place I had been trying to get beyond, but now that Chad was home safe I knew I had never wanted to leave.
We parked behind the valet parking booth next to the Pocasset Golf Club clubhouse. Chad took a lumpy sock out of a military duffle bag and tucked it inside his jean jacket. “BRB, dude,” he said, and got out of the car and went inside the booth.
The booth sat there, dark, motionless, silent, with a blue glow coming through the blinds. I sat and downed another beer, tasting its bitterness, waiting for fifteen minutes, maybe more, for Chad to emerge.
Chad got into the car and held up a set of keys to a ’66 Mustang.
“Whoa, so how did you do that?” Like I needed to ask.
“Just a little barter. This way we get the sweet ride, we gas ’er, and return ’er by eleven. Ain’t no need to go breakin’ no law.”
Chad texted his friends: Got the ride boyz. Where U @?
In Woods Hole, we all gathered back at the dock at five, like always. Stubby was yelling into his cell phone, pacing back and forth. Second Chance was gone.
Freddie and Tiny never made it to Osterville. A coast guard patrol boat picked them up near Popponesset where the boat had run out of gas. They said they had planned to bring it back in time and would have filled it up, but they didn’t have any money because of school policy so it wasn’t their fault Second Chance ran out of gas.
The Mustang at the golf club had a full tank. So did Chad. Whatever he had done in that booth had shot his eyes through with blood.
We drove to where his friends were sliding a slim jim into the door of some shit Toyota.
“Well, I guess you won,” one of his friends said and gawked at our ride.
Chad and I had a few beers left, but his friends were out so Chad thought it would be cool to race to the liquor store over on the other side of the Bourne Bridge.
“The old Bridge Over Troubled Waters, ha ha ha,” his friend, the one who was driving, said.
“Whoever gets there last is buying,” Chad commanded, then laid down enough rubber to leave them behind in a cloud of smoke.
The more fucked up and dangerous Chad’s idea was, the more likely it was that he could pull it off. That’s what set him apart. That’s why I loved him and feared him all the same. Why I thought he was going to come home a hero. Why we were going to beat his friends across that bridge and they were gonna be buying us a case of Bud and a bottle of Goldschläger, suckahs.
Later on, the cops kept asking me what I said to try and stop Chad from “stealing” the Mustang or from cooking up Ritalin and Talwin—which, they explained, is as good as mixing coke and heroin—in that valet booth, or even putting back half a case of beer while driving. They made a big deal out of the drinking and driving as if everyone else around here didn’t do it. But I never said anything to stop Chad. It wasn’t just because I knew there was no stopping him once he set his mind to a thing, or that I knew how badly he needed to win at something since coming back home. It was that I had wanted us to win together.
Cunningham ended up revoking Saturday privileges because we all knew that Freddie and Tiny were planning to steal the boat and never said anything about it.
Bobby tried to reason with Cunningham: “But if you had never known about it you never would’ve gotten upset, so you don’t need to punish us because there was no reason to tell you. Besides, Tiny had been talking about stealing Second Chance for weeks. Until they didn’t come back, nothing bad had happened, so what was there to say?”
Freddie and Tiny were punished with extra wood chopping. Bobby had to shovel shit all week.
I still remember what it felt like going over the bridge in that Mustang. All I could feel was how high and fast we were, Chad and me together, set free from something inside.
“Pop me another cold one,” Chad said.
I reached into the backseat, grabbed one of our beers, and cracked open the bottle as we were nearing the exit. But we were in the left-hand lane and the exit ramp was already in sight. Chad’s friends were right behind us. Chad floored the Mustang to get ahead of an SUV next to us and ferry over straight onto the ramp. But the SUV driver gave us the finger and accelerated too, cutting us off from the lane. Chad slammed on the brakes. My head whipped forward. The beer went flying out of my hand. The bottle sailed into the windshield and exploded. A spray of beer stung Chad’s eyes. He lifted his hands off the wheel. Shards of glass cut his face, his hands.
My shoulder hit the window. The seat belt cut into my neck. And the Mustang slammed into the driver’s-side door of a Honda Civic that was trailing the SUV.
Katelyn Robichard, UMass Dartmouth freshman and Corsairs striker, 2009 Little East Conference Women’s Soccer Offensive Player of the Year, was at the wheel of the Honda. Her seat belt stayed secured, but her airbag didn’t inflate. And pretty little Katelyn Robichard snapped forward at her waist, just like a jack-in-the-box that sprung up out of its lid and collapsed.